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NECROMANCER - 1988 - Director: Dusty Nelson The only
good thing about this movie is the luscious Elizabeth Katain.
The story is about as stupid as they come. It's like an updated
version of "I Spit On Your Grave" meets "Witchcraft".
Katain's character is raped, on campus, and she knows the guys who did
it. First of all, she doesn't go to the police, instead goes to
a "Necromancer" to exact her revenge. The entire story
is so weak and unemotional, the fact that her rapists are walking around
on the same campus, and she barely seems upset is absurd. Typical
low-grade acting and overblown stereotypes make this one painful to
watch... except for Katain of course... grrrrr. I'd recommend
this one for comedic purposes if it wasn't for the rape theme, that's
just not funny and in my opinion is taken too lightly here, even though
they get it in the end. |
NEEDFUL THINGS - 1993 - Based On Novel By: Stephan King Good cast
to start with, Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedilia and Max Van Sydow round out
the talented actors. This Stephan King based movie has more of
a message than most as it deals with temptation and good vs. evil.
This one is best for adults because it's not heavy into frights and
gore, but rather character development. When Leland Gaunt (Van
Sydow) moves to town and opens up his store "Needful Things"
the small New England town starts to fall apart from revenge, jealousy
and desire. It's fairly uneventful until the end but we can learn
something about ourselves if we let it. Not nearly as frightening
as most King's work, this one is good quality due to it's better-than-average
cast. |
NIGHT ANGEL - 1990 This one
had a good start, it seemed like it might be rather interesting. Then
we learned that the villain, "Lillith" was supposed to be
"Adam's" original wife! Come on, I have a ridiculous
imagination, but even I didn't buy this one. We later learn she was
"Satan's Whore", and was banished from the Garden Of Eden.
It's basically a twist on the Vampire story, it turns out she can only
be killed by a dagger through the heart. Again I say, Come on!
How about something a little more original, like an anvil on the foot,
or a pitchfork in the ass... Allright, aside from that, this one has
that "erotica" feel to it, even though the nudity is kept
fairly clean. The efx are done better than average with some
pretty nice gore thrown in for good measure. Overall, it moves along
fast enough to stay entertaining, if you don't think too hard. |
NIGHT OF THE COMET - 1984 - Director: Thom Eberhardt Almost a
perfect hybrid of "Valley Girls" meets "Dawn Of The Dead".
Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney star as valley girl sisters
who have survived the wrath of a deadly comet that nearly wiped out
humanity. It's a fun movie that could be conceived as shallow,
but if you look deeper it tells us something about ourselves.
Some survivors have turned into flesh-eating zombies, but they aren't
as dangerous as a group of scientists who want to use the survivors
for their blood to keep themselves alive. It goes back and forth
from a Sci-Fi/Horror flick to a light-hearted comedy, which keeps you
guessing. Stewart and Maroney are great and veteran actress Mary
Woronov is good as one of the creepy scientist survivors. Surprisingly
this one hasn't dated too bad other than the soundtrack, which includes
Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". It has seemed
to remain a quite popular film over the years. |
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS - 1987 - Director: Fred Dekker Cameron:
I've got good news and bad news girls, the good news is your dates are
here. |
NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2 - 1994 - Brian Trenchard-Smith Six years
after the cult-favorite "Night Of The Demons", this entertaining
sequel finally was made. Still reeking of the 80's, "Angela"
returns to torment a new batch of teenagers. Director Brian Trenchard-Smith
delivers the material with tongue-in-cheek humor and a very capable
cast, including Christine Taylor (Marcia from the "Brady Bunch"
films and Ben Stiller's wife), make this one very watchable. If you
like your horror a little "campy" you'll love this film. Trenchard-Smith
uses humor and copious amounts of silly gore, lot's of sex, and there's
even a nun using martial arts to fight the demons. Bobby Jacoby's (Tremors)
character gets a little preachy about demonology, but other than that
this film doesn't take itself at all serious. |
NIGHT OF THE GHOUL - 1976 - Freddie Francis Slow moving
thriller brought to life by the presence of Peter Cushing, Ian McColluch,
and a young John Hurt. The story has been done many times before, a
parent (Cushing) who keeps their crazy sibling locked up. This time
he's kept in the attic and only comes out when summoned by the strange
Indian woman who serves as the maid and cook of the mansion. It's rather
slow, but has some shocking moments and some great sets. Overall, it's
quite average and a bit hard to understand as the story isn't set up
very well. Cushing and Hurt are very good and the underrated McColluch
shows leading man potential with this capable cast. Not bad, but could
have been better. |
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER - 1955 - Director: Charles Laughton Robert Mitchum
at his absolute creepiness as a "preacher" who preys on young
widows. This film is more on the side of "suspense"
and is slow by today's standards, but some of the dialogue and absolute
despicable behavior by Mitchum makes this a classic. The black
and white make even more spooky and the underwater scene had to disturb
people back then, because it's still pretty disturbing even now.
Mitchum's character "Reverend Harry Powell" gets caught stealing
a car and is put in the same cell with a man who had stolen a large
amount of money and left it hidden with his kids. The good Reverend
finds out where his family lives and when he's released, decides to
pay them a visit. Mitchum's character swoons and wins over most
of the family in his attempts to find out where the money is.
Mitchum's character is reminiscent of his character "Max Cady"
from "Cape Fear" in 1962. Both characters used the Bible
to excuse their actions, which makes a scary character, one who has
no remorse and justifies what he does by using something as sacred as
The Bible. This is slow in today's standards and probably won't
appeal to the younger generation, but for it's time period, it was,
and still remains a classic. |
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD - 1968 - Director: George Romero Any fan
of horror has seen this film, hell, it's basically required viewing,
Horror 101 if you will. George Romero accomplished more with this
low-budget black and white film than most director do in a lifetime.
The premise is simple enough, the dead have somehow come to life, and
have trapped a group of people up in a house in the country. Romero
gets stellar performances by a cast of unknown actors and actresses
who really did nothing of substance before or after this movie.
Judith O' Dea plays Barbara, a young woman who was attacked at a cemetery
and ends up in the house with Ben, played by Duane Jones, an African
American. Normally I don't make a it a point of pointing out someone's
race, but it leads me to the second tier of this movie. Along
with Barbara and Ben, there's a family and a young couple trapped in
the basement. What basically happens is the humans prove to be more
vicious than the zombies. There's racial tension and a power struggle
between Ben and Mr. Cooper, a bigot, played by Karl Hardman. 1968
was a time of unrest in this country and this movie was able to portray
that amidst a classic horror film. Any critic who says Horror
has nothing to say or offer obviously hasn't seen this film. |
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET - 1984 - Director: Wes Craven This movie
changed the entire Horror scene in the 80's as the "Slasher"
craze was winding down, this movie helped breath new life into horror.
Freddy Krueger was unlike any killer we had ever scene before, he got
to you in your dreams, while you were sleeping. Krueger was the
victim of a lynch mob years ago where he was burned beyond recognition
for being a child molester/killer and all-around bad dude. Now
Krueger is exacting his revenge on the kids of this town by killing
them in their dreams. Craven creates a nightmare on more than
one level, first when you're asleep, then while you're awake you're
scared to death of falling asleep, and finally, nobody believes the
kids that are having these dreams until it's too late. Craven
only directed the first and very last instalments in the series which
most critics agree are the best. Krueger is more menacing in
this one as Craven uses shadows and special effects brilliantly.
After this one, Krueger became a wise-cracking smartass which took most
of the fright out of him. No that these later movies weren't entertaining,
they simply weren't nearly as scary. Young Johnny Depp is one
of the main characters in this one. |
NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET: PART 2 - FREDDY'S REVENGE - 1985 There was
enough hype for this one to make is a success at the box office, but
unfortunately it doesn't live up to the first, except for the massacre
at the poolside party. Freddy is still reasonably scary in this
one, his face didn't look as plastic as it does in later films.
Freddy returns through Jesse, a high school kid who's family had moved
into the abandoned house that Nancy from the first film lived
in. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's the beauty
of this series, when dealing with the supernatural, you could make the
rules, re-write then and change them again at will. Jack Sholder
(The Hidden, Wishmaster 2) directed and to his credit, he did a pretty
good job, he's not Wes Craven however and the overall atmosphere wasn't
as menacing as part one. I enjoyed this cast more than most of
the others, especially Lisa, the fiery red-head played by Kim Myers,
who actually looks like a younger Meryl Streep with a better body.
The effects are pretty good, but the story and some of the characters
are pretty lame in this one. For being made in 1985, it's not
overly dated. |
NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET: PART 3 - DREAM WARRIORS - 1987 "Welcome
To Prime-Time Bitch!" - Freddy Krueger |
NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET: PART 4 - THE DREAM MASTER - 1988 |
| NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET: PART 5 - THE DREAM CHILD - 1989 - DIRECTOR: Stephan
Hopkins |
A NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET - FREDDY'S DEAD, THE FINAL NIGHTMARE - 1991 By this
time the "Elm Street" series had become more like "Sesame
Street"... except even puppets could act better than this crew.
The main cast is so unsinkable, you can't wait for Freddy to do the
slice n' dice mambo on their sorry asses. This one isn't even
the least bit scary and is barely even remotely funny. The whole
scenario of visiting the old town of Springwood is so completely moronic
it's almost unbearable to watch. Freddy actually battles his daughter
in this one, the plot is so confusing by now it doesn't really matter.
There's an appearance by Alice Cooper as Freddy's father and the music
was done by Queen's Brian May, unfortunately this isn't enough to save
it. |
=A
NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 7 - "WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE" -
1994 Great idea...
fairly boring movie. Wes Craven returns 10 years later to direct
the 7th instalment of the Nightmare series. Some believe
this to be an early idea of his "Scream" series as this one
takes a different approach at examining Horror and almost parodies itself.
This also marks the return of Heather Langencamp, this time as herself,
as this one examines the lives of the actors and behind the scenes of
the Nightmare films. Robert Englund plays himself and so does
Wes Craven. More enjoyable for the fans than the actual horror
is the behind the scenes look at the people involved. I do think
Craven was assuming a bit too much, after all, it was 3 years after
a dismal part 6 and Horror was in a pretty big slump. This was
almost like Wes Craven was trying to "clean up" the mess created
by previous directors. He does bring back the darkness and fear
of the first one as all the stars are getting strange phone calls and
having even stranger nightmares. Miko Hughes plays Langencamps
child, Hughes was "Cage" in Pet Cemetary, who's also suffering
from severe nightmares. He's too cute and overall annoying to
pull off the part of a disturbed child. What this movie did was
bring some credit back to one of the most successful series of Horror
films of all time. |
NIGHTSTALKER - 2002 - Director: Chris Fisher Based on
Robert Ramirez, the "Nightstalker" a serial killer in California
in the 80's. It's low-budget, but he makes the most of the camera-work
and editing. That also happens to be the major problem, Fisher way overdoes
the jerky effects in attempt to show how the killer is possessed. The
dialogue is also horrendous with no real storyline and major holes in
the script. You'd swear they lost some of the pages or something. Roselyn
Sanchez does make a very likable character, she looks and acts like
a hispanic version of Sandra Bullock. I personally don't know enough
about the details of the Nightstalker, but I know they took a lot for
granted here. They made no attempt to make the fashions or references
to the 80's either. |
=976-EVIL - 1988 - Director: Robert Englund Potentially
a good idea, but it simply falls short of the mark. There's so
many holes in the story that I don't think director Robert Englund (Freddie
Krueger) had a chance of pulling this off, or maybe he just didn't follow
the story correctly. Whatever happened, it was a bit of a mess.
Things go bad when people start calling a "Horrorscope" at
976-EVIL, where the calls are being answered by a demon, or the devil
himself. The school nerd "Hoax" ends up using the line
to get revenge on the school bullies. "Hoax" is played
by Stephan Geoffreys, who was also "Evil Ed" in Fright Night.
This is a similar role for him and is actually one of the bright spots
in the movie. The special effects aren't bad, and other than a
slow beginning, there is some nice action, but overall, it just doesn't
live up to the hype. If you are looking for some mindless fun,
it ain't bad, just don't try to over-analyze the story. |
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